OpenAI trims its raise + Apple Intelligence heads to China

OpenAI has lowered the target for its current funding round to about $20 billion, down from the $30 billion it was reported to be raising in October, the Financial Times reported, with a group of investors from the United Arab Emirates set to lead. The Wall Street Journal said about $11 billion is committed so far and that some large investors gave the round a tepid reception; a later offering to wealthy individuals could close the gap. The valuation stays at the $1.25 trillion figure reported in October, and OpenAI has not confirmed the numbers. The pullback follows Friday's tech selloff, as Anthropic's planned listing competes for the same investors.

Apple said the first Apple Intelligence features will reach iPhone users in China with iOS 27.3 in December, with developer testing starting November 4. Apple's own models run most of the features, from Live Translation to Genmoji and notification summaries, while Alibaba's Qwen is added inside Siri, Writing Tools and Visual Intelligence. Siri can hand some requests to Qwen, and users sign in with a Qwen account or with Sign in with Apple. The first release leaves out the new Siri AI announced at WWDC, and Apple says other devices will follow only after the necessary regulatory approvals. China's internet regulator cleared the service in July.

Judge Debra M. Brown denied xAI's motion to dismiss a lawsuit, brought by the Southern Environmental Law Center on behalf of the NAACP, alleging the company ran at least 35 gas turbines powering its Colossus data center outside Memphis without the air permits they needed. She rejected xAI's argument that the turbines are exempt as mobile sources under Mississippi's air rules, and its claim that citizen suits like this one are unconstitutional. A similar motion from the US Justice Department, which backed xAI in June, was denied earlier in October. The case is separate from the Southaven noise lawsuit tied to xAI's home buyout offers.

Anthropic has renamed its 200-dollar-a-month Max 20x plan Ultra, at the same price, and removed the rolling five-hour usage limit for accounts it verifies. The 100-dollar plan is now simply called Max and keeps that limit. Ultra still carries a weekly cap of 10 times the Pro plan's usage across all models, plus a separate weekly limit on Fable. Verification is automatic, based on account and payment history, and a phone number confirmed at checkout does not count; newer accounts keep a temporary limit until they are verified.

Starting in December, Plus, Pro and Business subscribers will draw on a single usage allowance across ChatGPT and Codex, measured in tokens, as OpenAI folds the agentic features of ChatGPT Work into the main ChatGPT app, according to an updated help-center article. How fast the allowance drains will depend on the model and the task, with advanced models and complex jobs using more, while Instant chat will not count against it. OpenAI says it expects most users will not wait for resets more often than they do now, and anyone who runs out can wait, upgrade or buy credits. The change lands a day after Anthropic loosened its own top-tier limits.